On Your Side
by Briony8869
Summary: Season 7 fic. Castiel has emerged with some new experiences after his time spent at the bottom of a lake and in the care of Daphne Allen. Dean has to deal with unexpected attention whilst he tries to sort out yet another end of the world.
1. Chapter 1

Dean sat in what he now thought of as the sex torture dungeon of their hideout, staring at his computer screen. The glowing light from his laptop was the only source of illumination in the room, since the gradual setting of the sun had escaped his notice until he was sitting in mostly darkness. He had had to move like five different kinds of animal skulls and jars of chalk (they went through some chalk, the Winchesters) just so he could put his damn laptop down on a flat surface. Now the table was also littered with several empty beer bottles, and he had just opened another while deciding whether to watch some Hentai porn or go back to his old standard of busty Asian beauties. Hentai had been letting him down of late, too much porn with monsters in it. Nobody needed to see that.

Of course, he had started out with the best of intentions; he was going to do some fucking research on how to find the next ingredient they needed for the Leviathan killing weapon. But that had led to Dick searching which had led to angst about Ghost!Bobby which had led to beer and distracting porn.

He put up his good old incognito window and went to the flashing, comforting familiarity of busty asian beauties dot com. A becoming young Korean woman winked and cavorted at him from the sidebar, and he was about to click to see more when he saw that her name was Cinnamon Tran. Tran. Like Kevin Tran, AP student, that kind of ok teenager who was probably being interrogated by angels or some shit, while he was sitting here at home, literally about to jack off. He groaned in frustration and slammed his computer screen shut.

"Some humans genetically find the taste of Brussels sprouts to be similar to soap." A deep, well meaning voice surprised Dean, and he spun to find a scruffy angel in scrubs and a trenchcoat sitting on a table behind him. "I wonder if that will turn out to be an evolutionary advantage or disadvantage." Cas stared at Dean with all the earnestness that, a few years before, he had used to describe his plan of finding God. It was off putting.

"Who the fuck cares about Brussels sprouts Cas?" Dean asked, annoyed. The Cas sitting in front of him was nothing like the Angel of several years ago who'd pulled a knife out of his own fucking chest, and then just tilted his head ever so slightly to the side in response. Dean felt like if he'd tried to stab this Cas he'd start crying and talk about how butterflies never shanked each other.

"I got it wrong, when I brought you back." Cas said, staring at Dean with eyes that expressed a sudden deep sadness. "Before you went to hell you used to be able to eat Brussels sprouts, but now they'll taste like soap to you. I'm sorry."

Dean couldn't help but give a sad little laugh at that.

"If that's all you fucked up dude, I forgive you ok? I don't think I've eaten a Brussels sprout in my life"

"But of course I've done much worse to you now Dean." Cas said, and he got that worried expression that made Dean think he was about to zap himself off someplace to meditate over his wrongs again.

"Save it." Dean snapped, turning back to his computer and re-opening it. "Apologize to all those friggin' interns you killed back when you were God. They can't eat any Brussels sprouts anymore either."

"Dean." Cas was in front of him now, ignoring any rules of personal space that Dean might have taught him in the past. Dean, who had been about to look at his computer, found that it had been turned off and put away, presumably by some angel mojo. Well fuck. "I want you to know that I never put too much faith in you." Cas said.

"Well, that's probably the best decision you've ever made." Dean muttered, looking at Cas's stained white scrubs. "Neither do I."

"No, I, I put that wrong." Castiel was like a child, fumbling for the correct words to describe his thought, "I put a an immense amount of faith in you Dean. And I want you to know that it was not misplaced."

Dean leaned back again in his chair, shaking his head with another sad, rasping little laugh.

"Look at you Cas. You're bonkers. You used to be an angel of the Lord and now you're…" His voice cracked, thinking of his brother wearing those same scrubs. "You're just messed up. That's all on me." Dean sighed. "You broke ranks and heaven fell apart because of me."

Castiel tilted his head, and it was such a familiar gesture at this point that Dean found it somewhat comforting.

"Dean, I've been thinking about the way that I feel about you." Castiel said thoughtfully. "And bees. But also you."

"What?" Dean asked.

"And I'm…" Castiel's eyes narrowed, and in a blink he was even closer to Dean than before, surprising Dean into leaning a bit back. He flinched slightly when Cas put a hand to the side of his face, running his thumb along Dean's stubbly jawline, examining every detail of him. "I'm not sure…" Castiel continued but then trailed off. Maintaining his expression of solid concentration, Castiel leaned forward and pressed his lips to Dean's.

Dean remained perfectly still for the duration of the kiss, hands still in the vaguely raised self defensive position they had been when Cas had zapped himself so close, his eyes open, his posture rigid. Cas leaned back again, facial expression continuing to register mostly confusion.

"Um." Dean said, still apparently unable to move. "What?"

"I care about you Dean." Castiel said, thoughtfully. "And Meg suggested that it might be an interest of a sexual nature."

"UM. WHAT." Dean repeated.

"She was there when I woke up Dean." Castiel said. "She helped me."

"She helped… in a SEXUAL NATURE!?" Dean had lost track of what was happening a while ago, but for some reason being angry at Meg was what came easiest to him at this particular moment.

"No Dean." Castiel said, as though the suggestion was absurd. He paused though, thinking. "She did try to kiss me after I woke up." Castiel said, matter of factly, "But at that point I was still somewhat disoriented and I found it distressing."

"SHE'LL FIND ME DISTRESSING." Dean growled.

"You will not hurt Meg, Dean." Castiel said, voice achieving some of the command it used to have.

Dean was sitting stiffly and rigidly in his chair, facing Castiel directly. He could still feel the imprint of Cas's lips on his. Castiel looked very stern and serious, and Dean forced himself to relax somewhat. He closed his eyes. Took a breath.

"Cas, you're going to have to walk me through this one buddy." He asked, pinching the bridge of his nose, trying to use as close to gentle a tone as he could achieve in his current anxiety-ridden state.

Castiel reached out to touch the side of Dean's face again and Dean rolled his chair backwards in a scurry to get out of range.

"Whoa whoa whoa," he said, "Cool your jets man, like I said, walk me through this."

Castiel removed his hand quickly and looked down, embarrassed.

"My interest in you is… unusual, in its intensity. My… my wife, when I was Emmanuel, she had a similar intense interest in me."

"She…" Dean had actually forgotten that Emmanuel had a wife. He had never called her back about the whole "I hired your husband for an evening and then he never came home" thing. Shit. "You and she…"

"We consummated our marriage." Castiel said.

"Uh…" Dean paused. So it had come to this. For the second time in his life he was discussing the sex life of an angel of the lord. "But um, I'm still kinda foggy on why that meant you had to…" He lowered his voice the way men do when they're about to say something distasteful, like the word 'vagina' or something,

"kiss me."

"I love you Dean." Castiel said, and Dean's head metaphorically caught on fire. "Until this point, however, I had not considered that I might desire that love to be expressed physically."

Dean stared at the floor desperately, trying to figure out a way to escape this conversation. Every nerve in his body was humming with embarrassed energy.

"Cas, no." Dean rubbed his head. "Just no. I'm not… Are you fucking KIDDING ME!?" He glared up at Cas, and was met by an expression of hurt and pain that Dean hadn't seen since Cas was standing in a ring of holy fire set by Team Free Will.

And then Cas zapped himself away, to go take care of some bees or something, and Dean was left alone in the torture dungeon with one more thing to hate himself for.


	2. Chapter 2

One of the advantages of inhabiting a dead meat suit was that one does not technically have to breathe. You can, I mean, it's nice to, but it's not an absolute fucking necessity. Meg had learned to appreciate this advantage during her several years running from Crowley and everybody else trying to shank her. As embarrassing as it was to hide out at the bottom of a lake for a couple of weeks, Crowley liked his tailored suits too much to scour every freaking body of water in the continental US.

And so Meg floated quietly in the remains of a sunken houseboat at the bottom of a huge Adirondack lake. Pieces of decaying fabric caught the grim, green light as they floated around her head. A snapping turtle paddled by, gnawing at the remains of a curtain. No way anybody was going to find her here. The skull of a poor soul who had been on the boat when it sank stared at her with its empty eye-sockets, judging.

"Fuck you." Meg mouthed, and floated on.

A flash of light informed her that she was no longer alone, and she was going to have to go back into "Crazy Angel Babysitter Mode" which was honestly just a big pile of shit in Meg's opinion. She turned in irritation to look at a submerged Cas, who looked very upset. Somebody had probably stepped on a frog or something, he cried for like an hour and a half about that the last time it happened. He touched her forehead.

"Dean is upset with me." Castiel said, paying no attention to the fact that they had just gone from being at the bottom of a lake trying to keep stickly furniture from floating away to sitting crosslegged in the middle of a field of Marigolds. Meg's eyes had even adjusted to the light already and everything. It was ridiculous that he could do that.

"Well you did turn into God for a while and then almost kill his brother." Meg said. "Which in my experience has not been the best way to get Dean-o to make kissy faces at you."

"How did you know I kissed him?" Cas asked, taken aback.

"You…" Meg's eyes widened, looking like Christmas or whatever the Demon equivalent of that was had come early, "You actually… Dude Cas! I was joking! You actually kissed!?" Meg threw her head back and laughed, deeply, for the first time since she'd tricked Sam into thinking she was a manic pixie dream girl. She shook her head and looked back up at her angelic companion. "Welcome to the 'I Kissed Dean' club Cas! It's you, me, and about 800,000 disease-ridden brunettes."

Castiel looked miserably down at his hands, ignoring his wickedly gleeful companion. A pretty yellow butterfly flitted around him, which only served to exaggerate his dejected expression.

"I make everything worse." Cas muttered. "I don't mean to, but I always do the wrong thing."

Meg, as always, enjoyed her companion's anguish. Her face shifted into an expression of concern however, best to keep the angel freak on your good side, and she tried to remember what it was like to legitimately care about other people. It was tough.

"What did Dean say?" She asked, her expression channeling the same kind of fake concern that one might expect out of Susan Lucci in a Lifetime movie.

"He became upset." Cas muttered.

Meg made a frowny face at Cas, as though this was a surprising reaction and not exactly what you'd expect out of Dean fucking Winchester.

"Well, that's because he's a homophobic asshole." Meg said, unable to keep the sarcasm out of her baby talk.

"I should not have kissed him." Cas said. "It was a mistake."

Meg leaned forward, a small smile playing on her lips. "How did you kiss him?" She asked, voice soft. Her eyes sparkled mischievously.

Cas looked up at Meg, caution in his expression. Meg uncrossed her legs and crawled a little bit closer, never breaking their gaze. Her silky blouse drooped low, which would have revealed a lacy bra and a modestly attractive rack to a companion that wasn't pointedly staring only at her face.

"Did you kiss him like this?" Meg leaned a bit forward and chastely kissed Castiel. He made no move to escape, but he stayed cold and motionless. Annoyed, she nipped his bottom lip to try to get some reaction from him.

When she pulled back, Castiel's face was still in the vaguely cautionary expression it had been in before she started.

"Fairly similarly." He responded.

"Well, there's your problem." Meg whispered, kneeling in front of him. "You should have kissed him like this…" She pulled Castiel's face in towards hers roughly, reminiscent of the way he had kissed her a year ago in Crowley's monster dungeons.

This time Cas's mouth opened ever so slightly, and Meg took that as all the encouragement she needed. She reached around the back of his neck and pulled him in even closer, wrapping her legs around his waist and straddling him as she kissed him deeply and aggressively. Her hand creeped down to the waistband of his scrubs, fingers starting to work their way past the elastic. She stopped when Cas growled a warning. Cas's deep blue eyes were inches away from hers, staring at her coldly.

"I do not love you, Meg." Castiel said, voice raspy with confusion and regret.

"Great. I don't love you either. Let's fuck." Meg grinned, and leaned down to kiss him again. But she hit the ground with an awkward thunk as Cas disappeared from his seated position and she was left alone.

"Thanks man." She growled, dragging herself up into a standing position. She examined the broad, flowery expanse in which she had been abandoned. "Where the fuck am I?" She griped to no one in particular.

Castiel knew that the orangeish glow illuminating him as he sat at the end of a rickety wooden pier was not in fact caused by the sunset, but was a product of the warm and fuzzy feelings that Dean's somewhat nostalgic memory felt towards this place in his subconscious. Hiding in a human being's head was a trick that was usually only used by the most unscrupulous of Angels, but Castiel had not had the best day. The quiet lapping of the water was as peaceful to him at this point as it was to Dean, and he found himself relaxing as he stared at the sparkling lake waters.

Cas's own mind was not exactly a safe place at this particular time. He was constantly flitting from one subject to the next, and as hard as he tried to hold on to the good ones, (Puzzles! Bees! Nutella!) big dark problems kept clouding his perspective. He squinched his eyes shut and tried not to rock back and forth. That was what crazy people did, and he had to prove to Dean that he wasn't crazy. Dean didn't want him to be crazy.

He stayed hidden, until he could sort things out on his own.

Dean stared out the windshield of his shitty little rental car. It needed a wash, bug guts had splattered little patterns all over it, and his attempts to use the wipers to clean it off had just smeared everything around and made it even harder to see. The wiper fluid sprayer was broken, and he hadn't got around to fixing it yet because he just couldn't be fucking bothered, not for this pathetic excuse for a vehicle.

Sam was sitting in the passenger's seat, contentedly eating a bag of carrots as though this whole Leviathan corn syrup thing wasn't the worst thing to have ever happened to them. Every time Dean heard the crunch of his giant rabbit brother eating another carrot his mouth watered for some potato chips or something. The Leviathans weren't content to just kill everyone Dean loved, they also had to take away his fucking comfort food?

If this was some criticism of American obesity, Dean was just about done with that shit.

"How's Cas doing?" Sam asked, starting to gnaw on another carrot. (He hadn't even bought baby carrots, he was eating one of the giant ones with a stem. He looked ridiculous.)

"What? Why would I know? I haven't seen him. Why are you asking?" Dean smoothly responded. He sounded anxious, like Sam did when he was 13 and tried to deny the existence of the dirty magazines in his backpack.

"I don't know," Sam shrugged, "I thought you'd been checking up on him because you don't trust Meg."

"Well, I'd be a fucking idiot if I trusted Meg, Sam." Dean muttered, narrowing his eyes and focusing on the road again.

"True, so how's he doing? Stop being so testy Dean, Jesus."

"You know what doesn't make somebody stop being cranky Sam? Telling them they're being cranky." Dean muttered.

"Did you two have a fight or something?" Sam asked with a sigh, glancing over to his brother and setting his bitchface to stun.

Dean sighed and tapped the steering wheel.

"Cas is fucking crazy right now." Dean muttered. "I think Meg's a bad influence on him."

"Well…" Sam's expression softened and he looked almost guilty, "We know _why _he's crazy."

"Don't blame yourself for this Sam." Dean snapped, "He fucked you up, he fixed you, you're even."

Sam didn't respond, instead he closed up the bag of carrots and twisted around to put it away in the back seat. He sunk down into the passenger seat looking out the window thoughtfully. Just a few weeks ago he would have had to concentrate on drowning out Lucifer's constant stream of negative babble and poorly sung rock ballads to even relax slightly. Now he could peacefully focus on the way the road bled into the landscape as they sped across it.

Dean reshifted in his seat, shoulders tense, glaring out the front window and trying to ignore his sulky brother. For a few miles they drove in silence.

"He kissed me." Dean said, as though the words had been wrenched out of him.

To Sam's credit, he did not actually do a double take. His eyes widened into an expression of complete confusion and shock, and he slowly and deliberately turned his head to face his older brother.

"WHAT!?" Sam asked,

"Shut up. I don't know. It was weird." Dean muttered, gritting his teeth and staring at the road with the focus that they tell you it deserves in driving school.

"He kissed you? Was it like, a crazy kiss or a real kiss?"

"A CRAZY KISS! What other kind of kiss could it be dude!?" Dean insisted, but even as he spoke he could see Castiel in his memory, staring directly at him and telling him that he loved him. His stomach twisted painfully at the thought.

"I don't know man, he has always been sort of…" Sam began a thought but he didn't finish it. He'd walked in on enough lingering stares between Dean and Cas to know that their relationship was, at the very least, confusing.

"Dude, Sam, you and I did not stop the apocalypse with an angel who was gay for me."

Sam paused for a second and gave Dean a reproachful look that said, "That is almost exactly what happened."

But he didn't say that out loud. What he said was,

"So, what did you do after he kissed you?"

"I…" Dean shook his head and tapped the steering wheel guiltily. "I don't know. I could have handled it better, I guess."

"Did you flip shit?" Sam suggested, with only a hint of disappointment in his voice.

"I might have flipped shit slightly."

"Hmmm." Sam settled into his seat, seeming more interested than concerned, which Dean found slightly worrisome. "Well, I'm pretty sure he'll forgive you. What are you going to do next?"

"What do you mean, 'what am I going to do next'? I'm going to save the friggin' world dude! Again! In case you've forgotten, we have bigger fucking fish to fry! LEVIATHAN sized fish to fry!"

"Yeah." Sam actually looked down, perhaps a bit chagrined. His hair, which had gotten out of fucking control, spilled down over his face so he pushed it back behind his ear apologetically. "It's just like, kind of sweet honestly."

Dean let out a puff of air, something between a groan and a sigh, expressing his utter frustration with the way this conversation had gone. He turned the windshield wipers on again, trying to clean off the windshield, and made it even more impossible to see through. Frustrated, he turned on some AC/DC and pretended he didn't have a little brother.

Meg was drinking a vodka tonic at a very fancy bar in the lower West Side (She had finally managed to pinpoint her post-Cas zap location in a field in fucking Connecticut. The hell Cas.) dressed in a sexy little black number she'd bought using one of the Winchester's fake credit cards. She looked like a total fox, so it was no surprise to her when she found the bench next to her suddenly occupied by a gentleman. She'd had about 8 people try and fail to start a pathetic little conversation with her, usually starting with some stumbling line about how great it was to see a nice person like her around here and how it wasn't creepy that he was talking to her because he was in the process of getting a divorce and who cares about age difference these days anyway? But this conversation was different.

"There's a common perception that alcohol affects men and women differently, however there is actually no evidence that gender has anything to do with alcohol tolerance."

Meg looked at Castiel, who was seated next to her dressed in scrubs and his stupid overcoat.

"You can't sit here looking like that." Meg sighed. "You look like I just smuggled you out of a mental institution."

Cas tilted his head, "you did smuggle me out of a mental institution."

"Not everyone here needs to know that, babe." Meg said, softening her tone to deal with her idiotic companion. She winked at the bartender, grabbed Cas's arm, and started to pull him out of the bar. They had to weave around a bunch of coked out Wall Street dudes and a bunch of sparkly women so fashion forward they were indecipherable from one another. Cas smiled and nodded at everyone, receiving precious few acknowledgements in return.

Once the two of them were outside walking down the street together Meg relaxed a little bit. If there's anywhere an angel and a demon (however disguised) walking down the street side by side will NOT attract attention, it's NYC.

"What's up, boo?" Meg asked, matching her pace to the fast walking traffic. Castiel kept up, looking up in awe every few seconds at the tall buildings like some sort of tourist.

"Meg, I find you very attractive." Castiel said.

"Aww bugaboo, I think you're pretty handsome too." Meg smirked, and hooked her arm through her angel companion's.

"I also think you have the potential to be a good person."

"A good demon you mean? Oxymoron, buddy."

Castiel took a few quick steps and jogged in front of Meg, putting his hands on her shoulders to stop her at the end of the street. The two of them became an unmoving roadblock to the steady stream of human bustle and motion that surrounded them. Everyone walking past groaned in irritation as they sped around the unmoving couple.

"Meg, I like you." Cas looked earnest, painfully earnest. "But I love Dean."

Meg raised her eyebrows, trying as hard as she could to suppress the wicked laugh she felt bubbling up.

"Maybe you should tell your wife that, _Emmanuel._" Meg muttered. "Look at you, you went from virgin to player in like three days."

Castiel's face, which had been expressing well-meaning concern, suddenly fell. He looked like Meg had just taken a handmade present he had given her and ripped it to shreds right in front of him. His arms dropped from her shoulders and she managed to get him walking alongside her again, dodging around traffic, heading west.

"I forgot about Daphne." Castiel said. "I… I…" He looked vaguely frantic, "did you know that honey is the only food that does not spoil?" He suggested, but you could tell from his tone his heart wasn't in it.

"Don't change the topic, you're in love with a dude, you're married to a lady, and you want to bang me."

"I… Dean is the most important thing." Cas said, but his intonation was even more flat than normal. "Daphne, my wife, she…" He looked at Meg, face registering confusion and desperation, "I was lost, and cold, and naked in the woods, and she took me in!"

"And that's not even a metaphor." Meg agreed smugly, "Seriously, that was an almost embarrassingly literal description of what happened to you."

"I need to help Dean." Cas said. "That comes first."

"Do you though?" Meg raised her eyebrow. "Castiel, I thought you'd given up fighting. I thought you were a bee now."

"I watch the bees." Castiel corrected.

"Right, and last time I checked watching bees doesn't exactly involve a whole lot of smitey action right? And what Dean wants right now is an ANGEL bestie, not a zen freak with a hard-on for him."

Castiel, who had started this conversation quite confidently, looked as sad and betrayed as a dog whose owner had just accidentally stepped on him. Without a word he zapped to God knows where. A man who had been walking at about the same pace as the two of them looked up from his smart phone for a second to where Meg was suddenly alone. Meg raised her eyebrows and shrugged. The man looked around for a second at where her companion might have disappeared, then rolled his eyes at what he assumed had been a lame magic trick bid for attention. He again allowed himself to become engrossed in his phone. Meg smiled to herself and picked up her pace again, making sure to tread on the back of as many people's ankles as she could. She hadn't felt this good and demonic in a while.

Dean, who felt like he hadn't eaten an actual meal in days, had finally just refused to eat any more vegetables unless they put some goddamned melted cheese on them. Sam, looking miffed, had been forced to admit that if they bought real cheese and not that fake orange stuff chances were that it wouldn't turn them into cow zombies. Punching the air in victory, Dean ran outside to the car to rush to the nearest corner store.

He had returned to the cabin in about 3 minutes, staring straight ahead blankly, a couple bees zooming around his head.

"That was quick. I thought you wanted cheese?" Sam asked, looking up from his trusty internet.

"I can't get into the car right now." Dean said in a traumatized monotone, staring directly at the wall behind Sam's head.

"Why not?" Sam asked.

"I… I can't…" He shook his head as though the English language lacked words to adequately describe everything he was feeling. One of the bees landed on his cheek. "FUCK!" Dean jumped and his hand flew to his face where a large red welt was forming just below his left cheekbone. "MOTHERFUCKING BEES, CAS!?" he shouted and ran back out the door he had just walked in. Sam considered following him for a second and then shrugged and continued to look at his laptop. That is, until he heard, "AND PUT SOME PANTS ON! CHRIST!" At which point his interest was piqued.

By the time Sam jogged outside to see what the fuss was about Dean was all by himself, shouting at an empty car. The only evidence that his older brother wasn't insane was the fact that a heck of a lot of bees seemed to be swarming the area, and there were two bare footprints on the sun roof.


	3. Chapter 3

There had been a time when Daphne Allen had been quite active in her church. Every Wednesday a representative from her community would come calling with a pie or a broccoli casserole and a look of grim determination. They would sit in her uncomfortable rustic rocking chairs, smiling and nodding for the absolute bare minimum of time required by Christian charity, and then flee for their homes. Daphne considered these infrequent companions her friends, although she had a hard time recollecting which name belonged to which face.

But a visit every once in a while was the least they could do, honestly, considering the amount of time and energy Daphne had put into their church. She was there every Sunday, a half hour before they started and an hour after service had ended, chatting enthusiastically with whoever would stand still long enough for her to pin down. The quicker she talked the harder it was for them to get a word in and squeeze out of the conversation.

She was the woman that people avoided sitting next to on donut Sunday. Daphne's solution to this problem of course was to be the one who volunteered to pick the donuts up after church, and then to be the one smiling blandly handing them out to every parishioner.

Everyone had looked at her differently after Emmanuel though. She had beamed as she walked into church that first day, escorting the gentleman she had found in the woods as though he was something she had accomplished and for which she deserved praise.

Suddenly everyone was talking to her.

"And how exactly did you two meet?" Father Wickfield had asked, eyeing her dark haired and absurdly handsome companion, who had been standing immobile and staring intensely at the cross over the altar for the past six minutes

"Where did he come from?" Asked Nancy Sue, the community service and event organizer.

"How long have you known him?" Asked Nick the organist.

"We're just worried" all of them had said, in one way or another, "We're worried that he's taking advantage of you." "We just want you to be safe."

But Daphne had just smiled bashfully and pulled her man closer to her side. They didn't understand. None of them had been there the day she found him on her afternoon walk through the forest behind her house. She'd been power-walking, listening on her iPod to some spiritual music (not gospel, she found gospel music too ethnic) when she had seen him. He had been sitting cross-legged on the ground, naked, soaking wet, and for the first time in her life Daphne had been confronted with a real life male penis. It just lay there by his thigh, being terrifying.

It wasn't until he said "Hello" in his deep, strange voice that she had looked up from his extremities to see his lovely face.

Right away she knew that she had been blessed. God had given her this man to take care of. She escorted the strange, nude man to her home. He listened to her as though every word that she spoke held a deep personal meaning for him. When she shared her deep love for God he didn't nod patronizingly like everyone else, his eyes cut into her soul and loved what they saw.

The fact that he was so vulnerable and lost had just convinced her further that she was the one who was meant to nurture this man, to lead him back into the light.

The first night he had stayed in her home she had let him wear her dad's old clothes that she kept in a box up in the attic. He'd eaten the canned soup she made him, looking at his spoon with an expression of sweet confusion, and slept on her couch. The second night, after finding out that he really had no idea who he was or where he came from, she had gone to and chosen Emmanuel for him. The third night she had invited him to her bed.

Daphne had trembled that night as she slipped on her comfortable cotton nightshirt with a picture of a cartoon moose on it. Emmanuel lay in her queen size bed, underneath a handmade quilt, flat on his back without moving at all. In fact, he remained perfectly still even after she had run her hand up his shirt and begun caressing his chest. It wasn't until she had straddled him and rubbed her whole body against his prone form that he responded at all.

"What are you doing?" He'd asked.

"I'm showing you how much I love you Emmanuel." She had whispered in his ear, closing her eyes and grinding her crotch against his. "I just love you so much."

The next morning had been Sunday. She'd introduced Emmanuel to everyone at church as her fiancé. When Pastor Wickfield had refused to perform the service she had made one up on her own. Emmanuel didn't seem to mind. They were married in a week.

People at church stopped paying her visits once Emmanuel began miraculously healing people. In practice Christian charity has limits, and this wasn't one of those speaking-in-tongues, snake charming churches you saw on the news that believed in that sort of healing nonsense. Daphne didn't care though, she had her Emmanuel and she didn't need anything else.

Ever since the pretty man with the green eyes and too-long eyelashes came and kidnapped her Emmanuel, she had prayed every day for his return. She sat still in her home, or in the woods by the lake where she had found him, wringing her hands together and whispering heartfelt pleas to God for hours.

So it came as something of a shock when she walked back into her home, which had returned depressingly to a state of loneliness unbroken even by weekly church visits, to find her Emmanuel waiting for her in their living room.

"Manny?" She whispered, frozen to the spot in her doorframe. Emmanuel was by the refrigerator, dressed in messy scrubs and a dirty tan overcoat, shifting his weight from foot to foot anxiously. His hair was messy and he badly needed a shave. He looked up at her with trepidation, and his eyes were as clear and blue as they ever were, if a bit more anxiety ridden.

"Daphne, I've decorated." Emmanuel said, with a strange apologetic smile.

Daphne stared at Emmanuel in confused silence for a few seconds, unable to comprehend what he had said. He sheepishly pointed upwards. Hanging from the ceiling was a "Happy Birthday" banner that she distinctly remembered putting away in the attic last year. Next to it was a banner that she usually hung at the front of the house for Thanksgiving, which had a turkey in a football helmet on it. Christmas lights were strung from every corner of the room spreading out into the living room, illuminating both her plastic Halloween candy bucket and an Easter Bunny figurine she'd forgotten that she'd ever owned.

"Why…? What?" Daphne looked back at her husband, shook her head as though to clear it, and threw herself into Emmanuel's arms. Her tears soaked into the shoulder of his overcoat, which smelled like a combination of musty car trunk and dried blood. "You're home!" She sobbed into his shoulder.

"I… I am not actually home." Emmanuel said apologetically, and the shock of that made Daphne pull back for a moment.

"Emmanuel!" She said, exhaling warmly and caressing his face with her palm, "God has blessed us and brought you back to me!"

"My name is not Emmanuel." Daphne's husband said, looking at her face sadly. "And God had nothing to do with it. I… I had hoped that the decorations would help, but I think I was wrong." His eyes flicked upwards.

"Help what?" Daphne looked around again at her guerrilla decorated home. Every holiday item she owned was on garish display, and the end effect was somewhat tacky and schizophrenic.

"Daphne, I am here to say goodbye. You helped me when I was lost, but I'm better now, and I have to go sort myself out."

Daphne took a few steps back from her husband. Nothing he was saying made any sense to her.

"You promised to love me forever." Daphne said, her voice surprisingly cool considering the tears that were still leaking from her eyes, like her body hadn't quite caught up with all the emotions she was feeling.

"I had amnesia." He responded, raising a fair point. Emmanuel looked both the same and different from how she remembered him. He had always been so serious and sad before, now he seemed jittery, manic, strange. His eyes kept shifting from item to item in the house, never meeting her gaze.

"We're husband and wife." Daphne said.

Castiel's eyes widened slightly, and he began to shift his weight between his feet more rapidly. "In Segovia Spain…" He spoke quickly and nervously, "a native delicacy is piglet roasted so tender you can cut its head off with a plate." The thought of that seemed to upset him further. "One wonders if the cultural significance outweighs the moral dubiousness of dining on an infant life form."

Daphne continued to stare at her husband. He was so precious and delicate, with his scrubs and his odd mannerisms. She was reminded of his first night in her home, when she could hear him gasping and crying in his sleep from her position upstairs. "You aren't all right Emmanuel." Daphne said, shaking her head and taking several steps toward her husband. "I don't know what they did to you, but you aren't all right."

"I'm better than I've been in a long time Daphne." Emmanuel said, walking backwards away from his wife. "I have to leave you. I just wanted to thank you for taking care of me." He tilted his head to the side apologetically. "And suggest that in the future perhaps you wait a bit before pursuing physical intimacy with someone who cannot remember their own name."

Daphne shook her head in confusion, but she was too upset to deal with the nonsense spilling out of her husband's mouth. "Stay!" She managed to beg.

"I can only help myself now, Daphne. Goodbye." Emmanuel disappeared as Daphne tried to clutch him again. Abandoned and confused, Daphne just let herself cry, sinking down to the floor of her kitchen. Above her, her Happy Birthday banner waved sadly in the slight gusts from her central air conditioning.

Castiel waited in the car obediently while Meg went in to speak to the Winchesters, like a puppy in a Wal-Mart parking lot. Meg had been in San Antonio Texas when Cas zapped in front of her a few days earlier. She was eating at a taco cart at the side of the road, and had flushed a bit when she saw that Cas had seen her. It's difficult to look sexy and devious whilst eating a weird sweet corn/cheese/mayonnaise/chili pepper thing out of a Styrofoam cup.

"I can't deal with your shit today, Angel." She'd said to the scruffy man addressing her from the side of the road. A bystander might have thought they were dating.

Castiel refused to tell Meg why he was so upset, but was in a particularly stubborn state of craziness. No matter how much Meg tried to convince him to just zap them both to Montana to meet up with Dean and Sam he would refuse, and explain something about the way Loons care for their young or some shit. She'd stolen a car but Castiel had a stint of moral exactitude and refused to enter it since it hadn't been properly paid for, so she'd had to _rent a fucking car _to drive them to see the dumbass hunting brothers extraordinaire. By the time she'd knocked on Sam and Dean's door Meg was just about through with everything.

Castiel hadn't had a very pleasant drive either honestly. Getting stabbed in the arm with a pen every time he mentioned monkeys did not make for a soothing 10 hours. Obviously not mentioning monkeys was out of the question. They were so interesting. By the time Dean leaned his head down to the driver's side window of the car Cas was a bit tense, intent on staring right ahead and not saying anything at all about sex or kissing or love or anything.

He opened with a pretty great line about lipstick. And monkeys, of course.

Dean rolled his eyes and wrangled Cas into the cabin. Neither of them mentioned the kiss for a while, but things were awkward. Cas could even tell, and he was particularly bad at picking up on these things. He told Dean and Sam about how his Garrison had been murdered and how Kevin Tran had been taken by Dick. Once Crowley showed up he got very uncomfortable and had a much harder time figuring out what was a normal thing to say and what was a crazy thing to say.

Dean watched sadly as Cas flinched and sputtered his way through interacting with Crowley. If they hadn't needed Crowley so desperately to finally get Dick, he would have knocked him in the jaw for some of the shit he was saying to his angel. Cas just pottered around saying vaguely good-natured things, and Dean missed his intimidating tax-accountant angel friend more than ever.

Crowley eventually tossed his vial of blood over to the Winchesters. Dean wasn't stupid enough to think it was actually Crowley's blood, he figured they had at best a 20% chance that the demon wasn't backstabbing them. Eventually Crowley fucked off to wherever kings of hell go when not immediately occupied by Leviathan smushing business.

Meg had a mini freak out.

"ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME YOU LET ME IN THIS FUCKING CABIN AFTER SUMMONING CROWLEY!?" She shrieked at Sam, her eyes going black unintentionally in her rage.

"You pushed your way in here sweetheart." Dean snapped, stepping futilely between Sam and the very pissed off she-demon. "You want to lay low? Go lay low! Jesus!"

"Don't 'sweetheart' me, shithead." Meg growled, but her tone lowered and her eyes clicked back to humanity.

"Meg, I won't let anyone hurt you." Castiel said, stepping up from behind her and trying to put a comforting hand on her shoulder.

"Oh fuck off, Anthony Perkins, go suck your boyfriend's dick or something" Meg threw Castiel's hand off her shoulder with a disgusted sneer. Castiel flushed and stepped back, staring at anything in the room that was not Dean. Sam's eyes narrowed and he looked at Meg as though he'd just remembered how delicious all that blood flowing through her veins was. For all her sass Meg was still trembling slightly, and she jumped at the sound of a tree branch tapping the window. She looked back over at Sam and Dean, face grim. "I assume you borderline alcoholics have beer? I need one."

"He just saved your friggin' life, bitch." Dean growled, indicating Castiel with a slight tilt of his head.

Meg rolled her eyes. "Oh whatever. He dragged you out of hell with one hand, and you didn't even kiss back."

Dean's eyes widened, face flushing a deep crimson. Meg smirked. Judging from Dean's visible embarrassment, she had nailed it. Dean glanced over at Castiel, sitting on a table in the corner trying to take up as little space as possible, like maybe Dean wouldn't see him or something.

"You told her?" Dean whispered, almost too angry to enunciate words.

"Monkeys?" Cas suggested.

"Dean." Sam's voice was calming, as it always was. He put a gigantic hand on his brother's shoulder, and shook him gently. "Bigger fish to fry?"

Dean looked up to meet his brother's eyes. They'd been together for so long at this point that they could communicate with a glance. There was something vaguely pathetic about two brothers entering their thirties who were still that dependent on one another, but nothing about Sam and Dean's life had been what you could call normal.

And Sam was telling Dean that he and Cas needed to sort this shit out so they could stop the world from ending with the bare minimum of teenage girl type angst.

"Cas, we need to talk." Dean muttered, and he took Castiel by the trenchoat-clad arm and led him forcefully outside.

Castiel and Dean ended up sitting across from one another at an old, rickety picnic table that Rufus had used to lay his shotgun on when he'd go outside to look at the stars. It still smelled vaguely of really good whisky. Dean had his eyes shut, and was rubbing his temples in what seemed to be a combination of irritation and frustration.

Castiel's eyes were open, and on Dean.

"I talked to Daphne." Cas said.

"Who? Oh." Dean asked, thinking at first that Cas was just spewing some more crazy shit before he remembered that Daphne was the name of Cas's i.e. Emmanuel's wife. "How is she?"

"I'm beginning to think she was never really well." Castiel admitted sadly.

"Oh." Dean sighed. "She did seem pretty eager to marry your crazy ass."

For a moment the two of them continued to sit in awkward silence. Dean played with the peeling paint that was starting to come off of the edge of the table. Castiel sat with something of his old stillness, the way he used to be before he really grew accustomed to inhabiting a human body.

It was Dean who eventually broke the silence.

"Why the fuck would you tell Meg you kissed me?" He asked.

"I… she…" Castiel looked nervously down at the table, before he could meet Dean's eyes again. "I had no one else to tell."

"Then don't tell anybody!" Dean growled. Castiel continued to look at Dean's face, but his expression was so sad he looked like an elementary school girl getting shouted at for forgetting her raincoat. Dean sighed. "I'm sorry about your Garrison by the way." He said. "That's gotta suck."

That forced Castiel's gaze away from Dean's again, which had not been Dean's intent. Cas looked the way Dean felt after his father died.

"You've lost quite a few friends lately as well." Castiel muttered, voice utterly miserable.

Both of them returned to their former uncomfortable silence. Dean almost missed Cas's random facts about monkeys and bees.

"Cas. This whole kiss thing," Dean plowed gracelessly forward in the conversation. The Winchesters viewed dealing with human emotion like pulling off a Band-Aid, it was a necessary evil, best to get it over with as quickly as possible. " I'm just gonna chalk this up to you being new to, uh, sex, ok?" Dean said. Cas looked up again, worriedly.

"I've been watching human beings procreate for millennia, Dean." He said very seriously.

"Jesus Cas, you can't just say shit like that. Gross. And no, sex is one of those things that you can totally get in theory and then completely fuck up in practice."

Cas looked down at his hands.

"Dean, no matter what you say, or think, I do love you." Castiel spoke haltingly, and Dean groaned and held his head between his hands. "And…" Cas continued, like he had started a roller coaster ride and couldn't get off now, "I think the love that I feel for you is the sort of love that your father had for your mother, or that Daphne wanted to have for me."

Dean squinched his eyes shut and shook his head between his hands.

"No. Cas. Not now. Jesus." Dean's voice was a growl, and his eyes glittered angrily. "Do you realize how many people have died this year? Bobby _died _Cas. And now he's back and it's kind of worse, but _Bobby died._"

Castiel's eyes widened in nervous horror.

"Jo's dead. Ellen's dead." Dean continued, starting to lose it. "That nice lady that we worked with that one time? Dead. That freaky guy who helped us hide out? Dead. You Cas? You were dead. You walked into a lake and you DIED right in front of us, Cas. People can't get anywhere fucking near us and get out of it ok. We talked to that Kevin kid for like three hours and now he's getting fucking tortured. I HAVE TO KILL SOME LEVIATHANS RIGHT NOW CAS. I CAN'T WORRY ABOUT HOW FUCKING MUCH I WANT TO KISS YOU."

Cas stared directly into Dean's eyes. His friend, normally so cool and calm, was shaking with anger and fear, and breathing heavily in an attempt to keep himself under control. Castiel's face returned to a careful state of blankness.

"I understand. And I am sorry." Castiel said, and he gave a small nod to his visibly upset friend. After a brief pause, he tilted his head to one side. "Would you like a sandwich?" He asked.

Without waiting for an answer Castiel did that thing where he disappeared but not in a way that you immediately noticed. Dean sighed and took in his lonely surroundings. Their conversation didn't seem to have resolved much, but he felt a little bit of the tension drain out of his shoulders.

Three hundred miles away, Castiel started the long process of soothing and comforting a wild pig that he thought Dean might find particularly tasty in sandwich form.

Dean stood up from the picnic table with a groan. He rubbed his eye and was embarrassed to find that he had allowed himself to tear up. Unac-fucking-ceptable Winchester. It was Leviathan killing time. If he died, great. If he didn't, he and Cas could work whatever the fuck this was out later.

They'd have time to talk later.


End file.
